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What’s in a Name
Children
everywhere are brought up on the notion that every farm named their
animals and Dobbin the horse, Daisy the cow, Spot the dog and Larry
the lamb were all alive and well and living in the country with old
Macdonald, who chewed a stem of grass and said ‘Arrh’ frequently.
Unfortunately, with the advent of intensive farming most animals are
numbered but not named but there are always exceptions to rules, and
when you are holding about seven thousand crocodiles and other
assorted reptiles it is not surprising that because of circumstance,
some end up with names.
In the early days
of the farm, the idea of a crocodile farm in the middle of large
commercial farms was certainly a novelty. One day I received a call
from Mark Hummel, one of our neighbors to say that he was irrigating
seedling tobacco beds from the Chongwe River and had observed a
crocodile in the water and would I like to try to capture it.
Towards the end of the dry season the Chongwe is more of a series of
muddy ponds than a river and although I had little experience at the
time of capturing crocs, I thought it would be interesting to have a
go, so collected some equipment and set off for the site.
To capture crocs
then, we used to cut a small channel in the bank with a restricted
entrance. A wire noose was placed in the entrance that was attached
to a simple trigger mechanism that was baited and a sturdy rope was
attached to a tree. The whole thing being powered by the Zambian
farmer’s universal friend ….. leggin: strips of old inner tube. The
idea being that the croc would swim through the noose and on hitting
the bait would fire the trigger that would in turn tighten the wire
and ‘voila’ you end up with a rather irritated croc on the
end of a rope.
Sure enough
before dawn the next day we returned to the site and there was a
neatly trussed croc that had conveniently rolled itself up in the
rope. We quickly loaded it and brought it back to the farm and on
release we noticed that it had a small wart under its left eye and a
small piece of its upper jaw near to the nostril was also missing.
So the croc has always been easily identifiable and was named
‘Kasonde’ after the name of the farm from which he came. He is still
here at Kalimba and is one of the largest of our male breeder crocs.
 The
only other reptile that has a name is one of our gaboon adders. It
goes by a rather unfortunate name that will become apparent later.
The gaboon adder does not exist around Lusaka and is confined to a
woodland belt from the south Mulobezi area all to way to the north
Congo border. Many years ago I was asked by the Ndola City Council
to empty out the old Monkey Fountain Zoo. There was one lion, two
large crocodiles, some monkeys and baboons and a few snakes,
including the forest cobras that we still have at Kalimba and a
gaboon adder. As we loaded up, the keeper asked me if I wanted the
other gaboon adder. I had discounted it as it was completely flat,
looking like a discarded envelope and I thought it already dead. I
told him so and he proceeded to pick it up by the tail and shake it.
Eventually it made some sluggish movement so I bagged it not
thinking that it would survive the trip back to Lusaka.
This trip was in
fact also eventful as I had a vehicle full of assorted animals and
snakes and a trailer on which were two large bound crocs that had
blindfolds on and a cage with a fairly vociferous lion. At the time,
there were many roadblocks between the Copperbelt and Lusaka and I
had great delight going to the head of the queue, pointing to the
cage behind and saying I was in a great hurry because the animals
were drugged and would awaken soon. Once they saw the contents, this
generally did the trick and I was waived on with police scattering
as I went past, except for one chap at Kafulafuta who insisted that
I stop. On asking why he said “My commanding officer has never seen
animals like this and you must wait until I get him”!
The gaboon was
still alive the next morning and we gradually brought him back to
health by feeding him small creatures first, and gradually
increasing the size until he was back to normal condition. But I
never forgot that flat shape that he was in when I first saw him,
like a deflated balloon, or a deflated something else and that is
what his name has been from then on. Did you guess it ? Yep, his
name is Condom ! |
April
2007